Cold Embrace
by JazzPizza
Summary: RonGinny darkfic. What Ginny does in the name of love. Also pairs RHr, HG.
1. The Flame

   Author's Note: Fixed a few grammar things and am reposting (June 23, 2003). Hopefully this won't be the first time this is revised – I'm waiting on a beta-reader or two. Same goes for all chapters…oh, and while I'm rambling, thank you to all of my wonderful reviewers, and the lovely people over at Fiction Alley Park (particularly my fellow Copper Pearls shippers). 

*******

   We lie in bed together, entangled in rumpled sheets and each other. His head rests on the bare, soft skin of my stomach, and he dozes with a smile, blissfully unaware of anything but our deep, rhythmic breathing. My fingers comb through his tangled obsidian tresses gently and methodically, exercising an uncharacteristic restraint. 

   I don't want to caress him. Pretend to love him. Linger in his cold embrace. I want to rip his hair out. I want to kill him – annoying, interfering, unsatisfying hero that he is. And I want her to watch. I want that bitch to suffer unendingly until I put her out of her misery.

   Show her to take away what's rightfully mine.

   The thought of him – mine – is enough to make my hands jerk. He whimpers slightly in his sleep. I grin openly. No one can see, after all. What they don't know won't hurt them.

   Until it decides to. 

   After all, they deserve to suffer. Without them, I would have him. But they changed him. He's different. He doesn't look at me the same way now. He loves me, all right, but only distantly, like a concept he favours. He loves them more. And his eyes…they burn for her, and her only, the way they used to burn for me. She stole it away, the flame, and now everything in my life is cold. So cold. 

   No one notices how cold it is. Even him. I think he likes to believe that it's warm here, blazing even, with the hands of my own tragic hero crawling on my skin. Didn't he remember how I used to play? How I used to pretend to want this boy, this Potter? I did it just to see that fire in his eyes. Now, the light no longer shines on me, and in the darkness, he can't see that this isn't truth. No. I'm still playing. 

   He used to play with me, too, but he wouldn't use his words or his guiles. Instead, his hands would play across my skin as if it were an instrument, and he a musician. He knew the song as if he'd practiced it a thousand times, and I think he loved as much as I did the violent crescendos and longing releases his instrument would give him. I thought so, anyway. Now I lie alone, unused and silent. I think he would remember the notes, though, if only he tried. I would help him. I still know the words, and I will always sing for him alone, no matter how the lyrics change.

   I wonder if he plays her so skilfully. Maybe he fumbles awkwardly, makes her believe that he's never even tried. Yes, that would be the way of it. Better that than have to admit where he'd learned the tune; tell them whom he'd practiced on. That would change it all. 

   I know I do the same. I pretend that I don't know the dance; I fumble, and I act shy, and I try to be surprised and awed by the newness of every step. It doesn't stop me from performing it all with perfect grace. He doesn't notice; it's not as if he can compare to some other. For that, I'm grateful. He's dull enough, not yet noticing the cold when it's been everything but coursing through his veins; but I know that his inexperience is the reason that I keep him in the dark. I'm his first everything. And I will be his last, and only everything.

   Anything to get me to the fire. 

   Even if it burns me.

   He stirs, and my cool composure rushes back to my face. All true emotion leaves my eyes and lips to dwell in a cramped place in my soul, where it aches and throbs for freedom. Now, I adorn my visage only with practiced reactions.

   "Ginny," he murmurs, and presses his lips to mine. 

   My lips respond in kind, simulating affection and passion on his mouth, which should be blistering hot, but I find only frigid.

   And though my mouth murmurs his name, somewhere in that cramped soul of mine there's a different word I hear.

   _Ron._


	2. A Single Red Rose

   I step into the room alone, bearing a gift. A single red rose for love; a single red rose to bestow upon mine. 

   I stay my eager, giving hand; she sleeps. I smile. To see her so still is to live in a dream – a dream where a vulnerable, beautiful side of her is mine to see.

   I smile wider. She's my own, and I am living in a dream from which I hope I'll never wake.

   Her vibrant chocolate tresses spill freely over the pillows and the curves of her smooth white skin. She lays curled upon her side, her limbs drawn in close but comfortably, as if delicately placed. A pensive, contemplative expression furrows her sweet, innocent face, and now I grin.

   Only my Hermione.

   I move towards her bedside, and hear a voice behind me.

   "Ron," the voice calls, seeming uncertain.

   A voice I know as well as my love's; better, even. I turn to face it, dopey grin still plastered on my face.

   "Ginny." 

   It's just Ginny. Not my Ginny, not his. Or, if she is either, she is both; my sister, and his lover. 

   I place the rose on Hermione's night table.

   "What are you doing here?"

   "I needed her help," she answers easily. 

   I nod in reply and lower myself gently onto the foot of Hermione's bed, as not to stir her. Ginny sits down next to me. 

   I fold my hands in my lap and stare down at them. Yet her gaze manages to search out mine. The look is penetrating, appraising, and I'm wondering when her eyes became so cold.

   "Ron," she says again. Her voice strains and falters in the same syllable. 

   The still silence unnerves me, but I endure it. I wait.

   "I'm sorry."

   Confusion reigns, but I endure this, too. I wait.

   She presses a single red rose into my hand. 

   "Do you know what this means?"

   I nod. "It means 'I love you'."

   "Something else. There's something else it means." 

   The urgency in her tone gives me pause.

   "Still. It means, 'I love you still'."

   Her eyes stray from mine, now, and her body shakes with the strain of unshed tears. 

   My sister.

   I push her to the floor and scramble to Hermione's side, gathering her in my arms. I can feel her lost livelihood against me – the lack of breath pushing through her lungs, the absence of a heartbeat. I howl in anguish.

   She's so very distant now…so unattainable. I linger in her cold embrace, not wanting to wake from the living dream that was my Hermione.

   Yet she calls. I hear her muffled sobs, and know the unshed tears will now be spent. 

   My eyes emulate, and I feel the salty droplets spilling over my own cheeks. I turn to her.

   "Why, Ginny? Tell me again. Tell me why you're sorry!" I demand, my voice cracking with my violent sobs.

   "Because I love you, Ron," she responds miserably, her body slumped in defeat. "I love you still."

   My lover.

   I throw the rose to the floor in disgust, and she howls in anguish, watching as I crush it under my heel.

   "Please," she cries desperately. "Please. Ron…"

   I glare through bloodshot eyes. "Please, what?"

   "Don't hate me," she requests, in a voice so very small. 

   "It's what you deserve."

   She swallows. "I know." Her voice is hoarse. Her shoulders are slumped in exhaustion. But she rises to her feet and turns to go.

   "Ginny," I call after her.

   She stops, and turns, agonizingly slow, to face me.   

   It seems to take every ounce of energy left in her body. I'm wondering when she became so frail.

   "Forget the fucking rose, Ginny." 

   Her eyes widen, but she doesn't dare to speak. She endures. She waits.

   "I love you still."

   My Ginny.

   She throws herself into my arms and we hold onto each other for dear life.

   But though her body is warm next to mine, all I feel is cold in her embrace.


	3. By Any Other Name

   The tears fall silently down my stony face. I watch, let them drip where they may. Nothing seems to matter.

   I know he loves her. That he always has. I hear him murmuring her name in his sleep, calling to her while he holds me. I see the way he looks at her. There's something beyond the warm affection on the surface – something that chills me to the bone. Something that's blistering and intense and yet lacking warmth – like cold fire. Cold fire, lying dormant behind his eyes before he realizes. Until he realizes he loves her still. 

   I tried to deny it for so long. I saw the way he looked at me, after all – affection, passion, caring all flashing in his bright sapphire eyes. And how we danced – how our bodies moved symbiotically in the darkness, how we became one in the scorching heat that consumed us. I remembered that, and I thought it could never be. He loves me. I love him. I thought I had to be dreaming.

   But it wouldn't let go of me, the thought. It nagged at every corner of my mind until his smile seemed like treachery, and I couldn't bear to listen – couldn't bear to hear him say her name. _Ginny_. An acceptance and a denial in one syllable; a declaration and a retraction in the other. Everything and nothing in her name.

   He used to say my name like a prayer; _Hermione, he would say, with reverence and adoration. He still does. But I can't hear it anymore. All I can hear are a thousand _Ginny_s ringing in my ears, and I know he loves her, I know he'll always love her, and it doesn't matter how much he loves me, or I love him. It doesn't matter how much she loves Harry or Harry loves her. Because he will always say her name that way – he will always form the sounds as if he's saying, "I need you, I love you, I want you, I can't". _

   No matter how much he ever loves anyone else, they won't be able to be with him. The _Ginnys will haunt them night and day and echo in their minds long after they've heard them. Long after they've given up on him._

   I would try, anyway. I love him that much, that I would try to pretend that they don't exist. I would look into his eyes, and ignore the way they see her; I would only see them shine for me. I would mimic his smile, and ignore that it's for her; I would only know that he was happy with me. I would listen to his words, and ignore her name; I would only hear mine. 

   But I've noticed something else. I listened to her saying his name. _Ron_. I say his name in faith, in loyalty – in love. I wouldn't have paid it a thought if she said it the same.

   But she says _Ron like he says _Ginny_. She says _Ron_ as if he's the only thing in her world that's real. She says _Ron _and there's something about her eyes – they change, as if they're the eyes of a different person. She says _Harry_, and her eyes shine. She says _Ron_, and she becomes someone who's not Virginia Weasley anymore, not the girl I've come to know; she's a soul, a force of nature – emotion in its purest form. _

   She loves him still, and by her eyes, I can tell that she knows it. 

   I swallow. I watch my haggard face in the mirror.

   The door creaks open, and she walks in.

   "Hermione," she says, purposefully. The tone changes when she sees me. "You're crying."

   She doesn't sound concerned. Just curious, slightly confused. She doesn't care about me. 

   I can't blame her for hating me. I hate her, even though she had him first. I hate her, even though I won't say why. I hate her, and I hope she knows that everyone will hate her for her love, and everyone will think she's wrong, and no one will see why it's right. 

   I do. And I hate her still.

   "I need your help," she continues, trying to remain unfazed by my tears. Her expression is dark.

   She isn't saying his name, but her eyes have changed nonetheless. Her eyes aren't that of the Virginia Weasley I know. They're her real eyes. They're the eyes of his Ginny, and I watch them carefully. There's no fear, now, but only interest.

   I know what she's here to do.

   "You don't have to bother," I say. "I can see it."

   She smiles. A twisted smile. A smile devoid of the innocence I expect from Virginia Weasley, but full of the malice I know his Ginny has for me. 

   She points the wand at my throat. Her hand trembles. Some part of her doesn't want to kill me. Some part of her knows that everything about this is wrong.

   That part is Virginia Weasley, and it puts up more of a struggle than I might have thought. Not for long, though.

   "For Ron," she says, and at the utterance of his name, Virginia is gone.

   His Ginny says the words that send me to my grave.

   "_Avada_ Kedavra_," she says, and releases me to death. _

   But beyond its cold embrace, those words are not the ones to haunt me. 

   Instead, I spend an eternity hearing _Ron_s and _Ginny_s echoing in my ears.   


	4. First Degree Burn

   I trudge up the stairs single-mindedly. There is one sole purpose to my seeking, to my questioning, to my trudging.

   To be with her.

   That's all I've had my mind on for a long time. _Ginny_. With an afterthought of "I love her."

   I love Ginny. My Ginny. We love each other. 

   And that's all that I can think about.

   Before, she idolized me. Harry Potter, the hero. The Boy-Who-Lived. The teenager who'd seen Voldemort's ugly pus far too many times for him own good. Now, she's the lofty goal. I follow her around, I worship every strand of her fiery hair, I'm struck speechless when she shows that she cares about me.

   When she kisses me. When she murmurs my name. When she tells me, in all but words, that she's my Ginny. Mine to love, mine to cherish. Mine in every way that she can be possessed.

   I drink in her flawless form as my lips travel across her body, and I pause only to look into her eyes – bright, beautiful brown eyes – and I tell her, in all but words, that she's in good hands.

   And I will never let her slip away.

   So here I am, trudging to be with her. Trudging up the stairs to the girls' dormitories, rushing to the appropriate door. I pause only to knock.

   Ron answers, and his eyes – usually alight with a warming fire – are cold and dark. What once was the bright, cheerful blue of the sunny-day sky has faded into the cloudy gleam of sapphires. 

   Instead of smiling, as I normally do when I see my best friend, I shiver.

   He stares at me with those haunting eyes. "Harry," he says blankly.

   I don't want to meet those eyes. I don't want to quail beneath their chilling touch. 

   And I don't want to reply to his words, so unusually devoid of emotion. That might lead to me knowing what terrible thing has made my best friend this way, and frankly, I'm afraid of what it could be.

   Because I can't even conceive of it.

   Instead, I remain silent, and look beyond him. A single red rose lies on the floor, crushed, like my dream of finding happiness in this room. Yet, I still find what I was looking for.

   She stands alone beyond him, eyes bloodshot from shed tears. Her hair spills about her face, pouring like liquid hot magma over her features – burning her.

   No wonder she cries. I rush to her side, and brush the hair back gently from her cheeks. She raises her lowered head to meet my gaze.

   Her eyes – those bright, beautiful brown eyes – are completely gone.

   The eyes I look into are not hers. The eyes I look into now might as well be hollow sockets, for how empty and unreadable they are.

   And the eyes I look into slip away, to look at Ron.

   "We have to kill him," she says bluntly. The razor-edge of her voice catches me off-guard, and stabs me in the back. 

   I remind myself, this isn't my Ginny. I saw her eyes, and they're not the eyes of my Ginny. She's been changed. She's under the Imperius Curse. 

   She doesn't want to kill me. Not my Ginny. Not my _real_ Ginny. 

   "I can't," Ron replies. His voice is empty. Defeated. That's because it's the voice of the fake Ron, who has just been overpowered by the real Ron, who would never betray me.

   Fake Ginny pauses, and I know the real Ginny is in there somewhere, struggling to be free. "You do have a choice," she says, as if making a realization. Fake Ginny knows that real Ron's giving his Imperius the slip. This does not bode well….

   "You can kill him," she continues, giving as much thought to my referral as I do to Divination, "or you can kill me."

   What? No! Ginny's not the one who started this Imperius thing, killing her might release Ron – but it won't achieve a thing! And if Ron kills her, he's as good as gone –

   – of course, fake Ginny knows all these things, I tell myself. She's just trying to trick real Ron into making a mistake. 

   I keep my cool. I can't risk breaking real Ron's concentration; it's hard enough to break the Imperius curse without having to think about something else and have your best friend talking to you at the same time.

   "Ginny," he answers quietly, "you know I can't make that choice."

   Yes! Good on you, real Ron! 

   But fake Ginny draws her wand, and Ron and I go stiff in anticipation. Best not to make any sudden movements when someone's got their wand drawn and looks as deadly as Ginny does under Imperius.

   Then again, Ginny, being a Weasley, looks plenty menacing without any curses, if she should be so inspired.

   "I'm sorry, Ron," she says, and Ron looks likes he's realized something from her tone of voice. He tenses. "But the decision has to be made."

   Her wand is pointed at me, and adrenaline spurs me into motion, at the same time Ron springs and Ginny utters the fateful words.

   "_Avada_ Kedavra_," she says, and I remind myself that it's not real Ginny, it's fake Ginny. To comfort myself, I just pretend it's the voice of someone else. I don't even associate it with her at all._

   It's easier that way.

   Easier to watch him fall in front of me, limp and lifeless. 

   Easier to watch my best friend die by the hands of my lover.

   Ginny's back now. Real Ginny – my Ginny. I can't tell by her eyes, which are brimming with tears, but I think the fact that she's doubled over in sobs after her brother's death clinches that it's her. I rush to her side once more, and try to put my arms around her. 

   She pushes me away. She won't even look at me. I remember the presence of the knife in my back, but remind myself what's just happened.

   "Ginny," I plead, "it's not your fault. It wasn't you."

   She laughs. High, shrill, and hysterically, she laughs, tears burning furrows down her face as she does. 

   "Of course it's not. It's yours, of course. How many have to die, famous Harry Potter? Special, wonderful, world-saving Harry Potter? How many have to die, for you to survive?"

   The knife twists. I grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

   "This isn't happening!" I cry. "This isn't your fault, this isn't mine, and everything is going to be all right! Everything!"

   She stares at me, and I get a good look into her eyes.

   They're as hollow as empty sockets.

   "No," she says coolly, removing my hands from her shoulders with a deft touch, though my skin scorches hers. 

   "No," she repeats, and she ignores my trembling and my tears, and the way my skin burns hers like fire. "Nothing is going to be all right."


	5. Silence

   We stand together, in stony silence, as he is lowered into the ground. I feel as if all that I am and all that I'll ever be is silence. Or was silenced, when his eyes went dull. When he fell to the floor in front of the one I intended to destroy.

   Instead of taking away the only obstacle to our love, I destroyed it. I destroyed it, and now every voice inside me that screamed and whispered and cried and begged for release is silenced. I am silence.

   The tumultuous noise of my soul lies in the grave, six feet under, deep in the cold embrace of death – where I put it. I cast aside the bitter tears. No more will I shed. There's no use in mourning. Everything in my life is over.

   Nothing is going to be all right, no matter what he tells me.

   He stands beside me, his hand placed on my shoulder carefully – he won't let his hands touch my bare flesh. He won't let himself do that to me – hurt me. He's blinded by his love for me, and he can't see. He can't see that his tender, longing glances burn me more fervently than his skin will ever be able to manage.

   The service ends quickly. No one wants to linger here; their fears haunt them more now than ever, and they want nothing more than to be in the supposed safety of their homes, so nothing can happen to them like it did to –

   Not that it was the shadows in the night that took him, though that's what they think. How could I convince him? How could I make him realize that I wanted to kill him? He can't believe it. He looks into my eyes, and all he sees is the falsity that was my love for him.

   His Ginny. He thinks I'm his Ginny.

   As they depart I step forward, and escape his touch. I kneel by the monument, tracing the lines that make up the name – the name of my lost soul. 

   I lay a single red rose next to the cold, unforgiving stone. I smile; the stone knows well. 

   The stone knows I don't deserve forgiveness.

   The stone knows better than he does, and he kneels beside me.

   "You loved him," he says softly. "So did I."

   He reaches out towards the grave, the rose. Something inside of me snaps. I grab his hand – his unworthy skin – before his innocence can taint the love that once was, and should have never been.

   My flesh simmers beneath his, but I don't care. My nerves should be screaming, but all that I am is silence.

   "He was everything to me, Harry," I hiss, in a strange parody of the sound my skin makes as it sizzles. "He was everything, and you were nothing."

   His expression remains solemn and contemplative, but his eyes betray his hurt. He feels the knife twisting in his back, I know. But he chooses to ignore it.

   When he remembers the way my bright, beautiful brown eyes shined for him, everything that should be pain is only pleasure, and all he cares for glistens on my red hair.

   I can see it in his eyes.

   And I hate how blind he is.

   I hate him. 

   "Ginny," he continues quietly, forcibly retracting his hands, "I know you're hurt right now –"

   "No, you don't quite get it, Harry." I interrupt – louder, and bitterly. "My soul is in the ground. My heart is crumbling to dust. And if I could make just one wish, it would be that you were in that grave, and not – not…"

   I quiver, and he takes it as vulnerability. He doesn't know the silence, the quiet I profane if I speak his name.

   When I speak his name, part of him lives. And any part of him alive gives hope to my desperate frame, and suddenly, the voices rise, as if they'd never left.

   And they condemn me.

   He reaches out to put his arms around me.

   My swollen red hand delivers a fierce blow to his cheek. Long nails dig furrows into his visage, like the claws of an animal. He recoils in shock, and grabs his face. He looks as if he can't even conceive of the blood on his hands. 

   "Harry, you bloody git! I tried to kill you!" I cry unrestrainedly, my frustration pouring out at him freely like the blood spilling from his veins. "_I_ tried to kill you- not Voldemort. _Ginny_ tried to kill you!"

   He stares at me in disbelief. But there's something there. There's something there that makes me believe that now, he might just understand. 

   I strike it home. "Harry," I say, cool as the cadaver beneath me, "I'm not your Ginny. I'm Ron's."

   Emerald eyes go wide. They stay so as this information processes. When it does, he simply stares at me. Stares at me, hurt plain in every feature. 

   "I loved you," he whispers.

   "So did he," I reply, "but apparently he loved _you_ more."

   I stare off into the distance, not allowing him to meet my eyes. "If he had loved me, he wouldn't have left me here alone."

   He snarls harshly, suddenly. "You deserve to be alone."

   I stare blankly back at him. He seems disturbed at the lack of effect his comment has made. I smile wanly.

   "Don't you think I know?"

   Silence reigns for awkward moments while he glances down at the single red rose I've laid by the monument. "Do you know what that means?"

   I nod, but say nothing.

   He gazes meaningfully at me. "Always, Ginny," he says softly. "Even if it was all a lie."

   With this, he turns away and leaves me to the silence that envelops me.

   It lasts, for a time, as I kneel by the unforgiving stone without repenting. 

   I don't want to be alone. With Harry, I'm alone. He's not there with me; he could never be. He's what I deserve, though. He's what I deserve, for what I've done.

   I deserve to be alone.

   It occurs to me that I don't care what I deserve. I didn't choose to love who I do; I don't deserve the repercussions of what it's made me do. 

   A voice sounds within me, a single, echoing voice. It's love, and it's come again to make me do its bidding.

   Like a faithful dog, I'll follow it to hell and beyond. 

   It's not hard to find a shovel, even when it's dark like it is now. The soil is freshly packed, and it hasn't settled yet; there isn't much resistance. I dig – swiftly, effortlessly, unrelentingly, and alone. Not for long. And then eternity awaits.

   The shovel makes me impatient. Soon, I'm clawing at the earth with desperate, burnt and bloodied hands, struggling with all the might within me. It's probably been hours, but I don't feel it. Not in my hands, not in my body. But my soul is calling to me, and something beyond my physical manifestation aches to answer.

   I reach the dirtied casket, and by that point, I don't even know what I'm doing consciously; mentally, something else has taken over, and all I know is that I must've gotten that coffin open somehow.

   Because soon I look down upon him. My soul.

   My Ron.

   I allow my heart to hope for a fleeting moment as I look down upon him. Pale, and still, and cold. Yet I pretend that he sleeps silently. I pretend that I'm a little girl again, afraid of the dark, curling up next to him, drinking in the warmth and safety of his presence. I pretend that the cover of the casket is the cover on his squeaky old bed, old and worn and perfect. I pretend that he can awake, and smile at me, and make everything in my world right.

   I pretend, and beside him, I drift into pleasant dreams, never to depart again from his cold embrace.


End file.
